The UK’s fastest growing on-line fashion retailer use inSTREAM™ to leverage growth

Started by entrepreneur Nick Robertson in 2000 with just 3 people, ASOS is now the largest online-only fashion retailer, offering own label and branded fashion and beauty products.

This rapid growth has seen the company look to automate manual processes wherever possible and this is one reason why ASOS has recently turned to Celaton to automate and streamline its PO and invoice handling systems.

Nick Beighton, finance director, had 4 key objectives. “Firstly we wanted to streamline our processes. Secondly we wanted improve our financial controls. Thirdly we wanted to gain some greater efficiencies, and fourthly we wanted something that was easy to implement. inSTREAM, Celaton’s cloud offering, fitted the bill perfectly.”

Brenda Green, manager of the accounts payable department, takes up the story: “We’ve only had inSTREAM up and running for three months but already there’s been a big difference. For a start, Celaton’s out-tasking services are taking increasing responsibility to physically open the envelopes, and scan them within their document processing centre directly into inSTREAM online. “

With the initial success of invoice handling through inSTREAM, ASOS turned their attention to their PO system. Before inSTREAM was implemented, discrete parts of the business could place orders on an as and when basis.

Now, the whole PO system is organised through a centralised online database: “Purchase orders and authorisations are all raised through the one system. PO’s over a certain value have to be ultimately authorised by our finance director, and this enables him to control any over spending by departments.”

The main benefit for Brenda and her team of 15 is one of time: “Users can now code their PO’s, and so our job is made easier once invoices arrive; we have all the information we need at our fingertips and this means that we don’t have to hassle the various departments.”

Brenda added: “Prior to Celaton, it was also time-consuming for departments to keep on top of how much they were spending on regular costs. Now they are able to budget expenditure with their PO’s and allocate to invoices as they are issued.”

Clearly, these benefits have a positive impact on the bottom line: “Absolutely” said Nick. “We now have an ability to cope with increased volumes of invoices without having to take on additional staff.

“We had a number of objectives when we put this in place and I’m delighted to say that Celaton have played a significant part in helping us to achieve those objectives.”